Subscribe To "Talk About America"

Saturday, September 27, 2008

So - we're concerned about America are we? Then why threaten to veto the package that extends unemployment benefits helping those who really need it while touting a $700bn plan to bail out the Wall Street vultures??

As a good friend of mine said "The Republicans have wrecked America." How stupid do they think we are? The Bushites are trying to stampede Congress into another disaster. After Iraq you'd think that they'd wise up. There is glimmer of hope the Dems and a few sane Republicans might fight off this coup d'etat of unprecedented proportions. No oversight? No challenge in court? This amounts to Congress giving the power of the purse to the executive branch. Reichstag fire anyone? The parallels are uncanny.

I predicted the Bushites would come up with something before the election to perpetuate their power. This may be it. What would really roil the country is another terrorist attack... October surprise? I believe Bush and Co. knew an attack was coming on or around 9/11 and chose to let it happen so they could institute a national security state, and carry out the plans embodied in the "Project For a New American Century" which included invading Iraq. Look it up and then tell me I'm just paranoid.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic Monthly, an a-typical conservative rather than a typical conservative opines on the charade that is the McCain/Palin candidacy.

I must admit I cribbed the "a-typical conservative" line from one of the comments in the above referenced Truthout article.

The outright lies of Republicans are "Beyond the Palin!"

Cribbed that one too - from Keith Olbeman's show. :-)

Choice quotes:

"And when the Senate and House voted overwhelmingly to condemn and end the torture regime of Bush and Cheney in 2006, McCain again had a clear choice between good and evil, and chose evil."

"Yes, McCain made a decision that revealed many appalling things about him. In the end, his final concern is not national security. No one who cares about national security would pick as vice-president someone who knows nothing about it as his replacement. No one who cares about this country's safety would gamble the security of the world on a total unknown because she polled well with the Christianist base."

I've predicted for many months the right wing Pavrovian (made that up myself) smear machine would go into overdrive because it has nothing substantive to run on. By just about any measure this country is worse off now than it was 8 years ago; unless of course you're part of Bush's base and are in the $1m+ income bracket. The Republicans have trashed our economy through laissez-faire robber baron style capitalism, trashed our military with the neo-con wet dreams that are the invasion of Iraq and the quasi-war with Iran, trashed our Constitution with warrantless wire-tapping, the end of habeas corpus and signing statements, the government itself has been trashed so that it has a hard time performing basic governmental functions. As Obama said "they campaign well and govern poorly." That's the understatement of the century. And don't give us that tripe about a do-nothing Democratic Congress that Fred Thompson et. al. spewed - the Dems majority is too slim to pass the important things like cutting off funding for the war and certainly too slim for a veto override.

And McCain/Palin expect us to believe they are change agents???? A religious fundie in the White House - that's change? A campaign run by lobbyists - that's change?

She was for the bridge to nowhere before she was against it? If thats what you mean by change then, OK, works for me. Keeping the money after the bridge was nixed by Congress that's pretty cynical especially when you use it to build a road right up to the water where the nowhere bridge was supposed to be. Billing the state $40K in per diems for living in your own house is even worse. Road to nowhere is right - let's hope this candidacy is on a road to nowhere.

Actually real change would be Ralph Nader or Ron Paul in the White House but I'll be very happy to see O'Biden at the inauguration. (that one is courtesy of a slip of the tongue by Chris Matthews during his convention coverage)

We are sure this video will draw an onslaught of right-wing attacks, but we bring it to you because it is our job to continue to convey the truth together and give these issues national attention. As Dr. Butler has said, McCain does not have the temperament to have his finger near the red button. Get this video to everyone you know-friends, family members, coworkers, and especially those who don't share your political views. The video is designed to reach them. Get it on your social networking sites like Digg. And get it to every blog, newspaper, and TV station that has ever overplayed McCain's POW story. It is time to fight back with truth!

Saturday, September 06, 2008

This has been bugging me ever since she made this statement at the convention.

From the WP 9/5/08 - click on the link above for the whole story.

"Palin, the first woman to appear on a Republican presidential ticket, continued her attacks on Obama, mocking his background as a community organizer in Chicago and deriding him as showing indifference toward small-town people.

"These are the people who do some of the hardest work in America," she said, prompting chants of "U-S-A." "They grow our foods and they run our factories and they fight our wars. They love their country, in good times and in bad, and they are always proud to be an American."

So, according to Palin people in small town America are proud of their country when it engages in a preemptive war based on fabricated intelligence against a country that did not - I repeat - did not - present a clear and present danger? Proud of America when it tortures innocent people? Proud of America when its fits of imperial pique is responsible for the deaths of countless innocent Iraqis, Afghanis, Vietnamese, El Salvadorians, Guatemalans, Native Americans etc.? Proud of America when its chief executive ignores the law and spies on American citizens? I suppose proud of America too when it arrested and beat lawful, peaceful dissenters at the just concluded Republican convention?

If she is right - and she is not - then what? How can one be "proud" of these actions? I too am proud to be an American but not for these reasons. I'm proud of our Constitution, our Declaration of Independence and our other founding documents. I'm proud of how we separate church from state, that we ended slavery and under the law at least all people are equal. I'm proud of many other actions America has taken over the years and the fundamental principles upon which our society is based. However, one needs to use one's intelligence to discriminate between right and wrong actions. America is far from perfect and has fallen very far in these last dark years of the Bush/Cheney regime.

Palin insults the intelligence of small town America. There are plenty of folks out there that don't agree with her radical right-wing Christian fundamentalist view of the world. God help us if McCain is elected and dies in office and she becomes president. She claims to be a Christian? True Christians don't kill innocents, true Christians don't lie. Her beliefs, which she is entitled to under our system, are in lockstep with the most radical neo-con, neo-fascist, anti-environmentalist, ant-feminist segments of the political spectrum.

Yes, there are unthinking people in small towns just as there are in big cities who chant U-S-A and support whatever war mongering politician happens to be the flavor of the moment but don't paint all small town folks with that brush.

Monday, September 01, 2008

An old saying goes: "There are at least three sides to every story; yours, mine and the truth." To wit:

From the NYT by way of Think Progress:

"Bush’s place in history depends on alternate narratives that are hard to reconcile. To critics, he is the man who misled the country into a disastrous war, ruined U.S. relations around the world, wrecked the economy, squandered a budget surplus to give tax cuts to fat-cat friends, played the guitar while New Orleans drowned, politicized the Justice Department, cozied up to oil companies and betrayed American values by promoting torture, warrantless eavesdropping and a modern-day gulag at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for people never even charged with a crime. To admirers, he is the man who freed 60 million people from tyranny in Afghanistan and Iraq and planted a seed that may yet spread democracy in a vital region, while at home he reduced taxes, introduced more accountability to public schools through No Child Left Behind, expanded Medicare to cover prescription drugs, installed two new conservative Supreme Court justices and, most of all, kept America safe after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001."